Career
Besides her career in cooking, she has also been a writer, hotelier and teacher. In 1943, Myrtle Hill married Ivan Allen, a vegetable grower, who was working at the farm Kinoith in Shanagarry. In 1947 the couple bought Ballymaloe House and the surrounding farm.
Later, in 1958, Ivan Allen inherited Kinoith from Wilson Strangman, the deceased owner.
By 1962, she was cookery correspondent of the Irish Farmers Journal. Originally the Irish Farmers Journal was a publication of Macra na Feirme.
Myrtle Allen was very active in this young farmers" organisation, eventually becoming "Vice President for the Munster Region" of the "National Council" of Macra na Feirme in 1959. A bid for the presidency in 1963 was unsuccessful.
In 1964, she decided to start a restaurant in her own dining room dubbed The Yeats Room.
Her philosophy of using local artisanal ingredients and changing her menu daily to reflect the best offerings of the season was "revolutionary at the time." Later she changed a few unused rooms into rooms for a guesthouse, which grew into the hotel Ballymaloe is today. By the 1960s she and her sous-chef, Darina O"Connell, started giving courses in cooking. Later Darina, by then married to Myrtle"s son Tim Allen, moved the cookery classes to Kinoith under the name of Ballymaloe Cookery School.
She served as president of the international body from 1994 to 1997.
Myrtle Allen"s husband Ivan died in 1998. In 2013 Myrtle Allen was the subject of a doumentary, Myrtle Allen: A in Food, which aired on RTÉ Television.
